Blue Jays face leadership questions after disappointing season

On the question of clubhouse leadership, three leaders of the Toronto Blue Jays could not agree on whether their ill-fated team suffered from a lack of it.

Asked if there was a leadership void among the players this season, manager John Farrell replied: “Yeah, you see it. I’m in the clubhouse every day.”

Replying to the same question, Jose Bautista said: “I really don’t understand why everybody’s making, in my eyes, a big deal out of that subject. It’s not something that I think needs to be addressed in our clubhouse. I think we have plenty of leadership on the players’ side, on the management side, on the ownership side and [from] the manager. So we don’t need extra or additional leadership. That’s my personal opinion.”

And this, from general manager Alex Anthopoulos: “We had a young team. Even though you can have young players that can show attributes and the ability to lead, not all of them can. Not everyone has comfort doing that.”

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The GM acknowledged that leadership might well have been one issue among many during the Blue Jays’ injury-riddled season. Because the Jays were big-time losers, it was easy to conclude that they lacked leadership, Anthopoulos added.

“Winning,” he said, “cures a lot of things.”

Ironically, three veterans — Omar Vizquel, Adam Lind and Jason Frasor — raised the leadership issue in recent interviews. They said more veteran leaders were needed to hold young players accountable for their mistakes. Farrell and his coaching staff fell short in that regard as well, they said.

On the season’s final day, Farrell, Bautista and Anthopoulos each addressed this issue, among others, in media sessions. Bautista had been away from the team since late July after undergoing wrist surgery.

While he has the utmost respect for Vizquel, Bautista said his teammate was off-base in his claim that young players are not called out for their mistakes.

“I do know that [Vizquel’s] intentions were not malicious,” Bautista said. “That being said, I can’t say that I agree with what he said. When it came to addressing mistakes and stuff like that, I see it every day, and I saw it every day when I was playing, and I see it on TV when I’m watching games.”

Farrell said he and his coaches are trying to cultivate leadership by encouraging each player “to take ownership of the team they play for,” regardless of age or experience. He said he has emphasized that message throughout the season and during the exit interviews he has held with each player this week.

“Leadership is ageless,” he said, and every player has the responsibility to exercise it, even if it means occasionally getting into a teammate’s face.

“That means sometimes getting into an uncomfortable position in the day-to-day function of a team,” Farrell said. “You might find growing opportunities when you stand up and stand for what is right. If that means calling out a teammate, that’s where some of that leadership comes into play.”

Some critics suggested that Bautista’s long absence contributed to a leadership void. Farrell acknowledged that Bautista is unquestionably a strong leader, but the issue is larger than Bautista.

“This is a collective effort and that’s a combination of myself, the staff and the players in that room,” Farrell said.

Bautista also downplayed his importance in that respect, and he also denied what many have suggested: that his presence would have deterred Yunel Escobar from wearing eye-black inscribed with a homophobic slur during a recent game.

He would not have noticed the Spanish words “Tu eres maricon” (“You’re a faggot”) on Escobar’s eye-black, he said. And while he condemned what Escobar did, he said the Cuban shortstop regrets it and is having “a tough time” dealing with the fallout.

“I need to defend him because I know behind what he wrote was, again, no ill feelings,” Bautista said. “I know Yunel personally. I’ve been to his house in Miami. I’ve seen his friends. It doesn’t correspond, writing something that people thought was derogatory, with his lifestyle and the people that he knows.

“So for everything to be blown out of proportion like it was, just simply because of a mistranslation and because of cultural differences and things like that, I feel bad for Yunel.”

“Maricon” is often used in casual conversation among Latinos to connote weakness.

Bautista, a native of the Dominican Republic, said that in the “Latin cultures, and in the clubhouse, and when boys are being boys, stupid stuff gets said all the time.”

Escobar’s mistake was to take the words onto the field, Bautista said.

It is not surprising that no one on the team noticed what Escobar wrote on his eye-black, he added.

“I’m not going to look at him and see what he’s got written on his face to see if it’s OK to go on the field. Nobody’s going to do that. Nobody can focus on that and pay attention to that and still worry about playing good baseball.”

As for the leadership issue, Bautista said it is a red herring on the list of reasons for a bad season.

“I’d hate for this being used as an excuse for our record,” he said. “We’re the players. We’re on the field. We’re accountable for playing good and helping to get wins.”

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